Contests Deadlines today Bennington and Nancy Thorp

AGENDA:

Submit to Bennington and Nancy Thorp TODAY!

https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/nancy-thorp-poetry-contest/



Work on 2nd person stories

Gamzon---Story in 2nd person

Gamzon Short Story in 2nd person

Marcy Gamzon


797 Washington Avenue


Rochester, New York 14617


585-544-7245


mlgamz@aol.com


Red Rocks, Green Grapefruits


You are somewhere inside your head in a space without walls, a space nevertheless confining because you are confused about how you got there and feel trapped. It is a place where you seem to be searching for a memory or perhaps a dream. Whatever it is, it wants your attention, demands it, requires it. At first it appears as a vague outline consisting of misty filaments refusing to take definitive shape. Perhaps it is only an idea then, not really a memory or dream returning. And just as quickly as it has emerged, luring you with the tantalizing possibility of its actually being realized, it dissolves or rather dissipates. Dissolves… dissipates… which word best captures how it seems to vanish within this place inside your head? No matter, it is gone.


What was it I was thinking, you ask yourself. What did it want from me?


Try to remember. Make it return. Go back to the place.


The outline begins to take form again; the filaments become a whole landscape. You begin to see a red rock desert with imposing mesas stretching across the horizon and the blue bowl of sky above it. It is a memory that begins somewhere in the American Southwest--Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona perhaps? Good, here is a start.


Now the filaments swirl into the shape of citrus trees--lemons, oranges and grapefruits—planted in a recently watered garden in a gated community with small stucco houses, one after another, all with adobe red tile roofs, and lawns made of landscape rocks instead of grass. A retirement “city” for seniors. And the people who live there are old, some very old, some not. In the backyards are citrus trees with shiny green leaves--lemon, orange and grapefruit trees emerging from cream and pink pebbled lawns, and this here is the house with its garden of citrus trees where you live now.


And then I told them not to pick the grapefruits outside. I said, They’re still green.


Green grapefruits. They had wanted to pick the grapefruits during their visit that winter. They had never picked citrus fruit from a backyard tree before. But the fruit was not yet ripe.


And then they said, So this is Arizona. Red rocks and green grapefruits.


And they left laughing to catch a flight back East laughed and it was a long time before they came to visit again. The girl and her friend. No, not the girl. You know the girl is not a girl anymore. You know she is a grown woman now, but for you she will always be the girl with dark brown hair and wavy curls that you would brush away from her face. She was your first, not like the second or the third. Your first child—the independent “me-do” girl. It is comforting to remember her as a child, even though you know she is a grown woman whose hair is starting to turn grey.


You told them to go up to Sedona, the girl and her friend, to see the red rocks because that was something to do and they wanted to do some sight-seeing. They thought a day trip might be nice. So you told them about Sedona, and they hiked up Cathedral Rock and when they returned, they said they had discovered a power vortex. They believed in all those “New Age” Age” stories people told about Sedona.


Whatever makes you happy, you said, trying to please.


The first year you moved here you drove with him to Wickenburg, then to Prescott, and finally Sedona because the neighbors kept saying that you must see the red rocks of Sedona. This was after he had the bypass surgery and was still trying to recover. The surgery had aged him ten years, and he was not the same, would never be the same. From the car you could see the red rocks in the distance. Pretty, you said, as you pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. Let’s have lunch and go home, he said. I’m tired.






Go back to the other place now. There is something pulling at you, something you must remember if only you can stay there longer and let the outline of what it is return. Perhaps you should open your eyes and look at the notepad on the night table next to the bed you lie in. Perhaps you wrote it down last night before you went to bed. Perhaps there is a clue. But you know you did not write it down. It is something you cannot forget--and now you’ve forgotten what it is. Go back to the place and don’t be afraid. Eventually something will form, the outline will take shape and you will be able to make sense of it all.


In the place a fountain forms. Or is it a memorial? No, not a fountain. A large stone, a plaque with six blue lamps growing up from the white stone below. Yes, you tell yourself, it’s a memorial. That’s what it is. And there is something about a butterfly. A yellow butterfly. Did you see it when you were there? The yellow butterfly?


No, not in this place. Somewhere else. Long ago when you were young and there were butterflies-- hundreds of them—everywhere. In the fields. Yellow like the sun. There was sun, dandelions, and the butterflies. Yellow. So bright. It was all so bright—and pretty.


But you’re wrong. There was only one butterfly, the last butterfly. And then no more butterflies, no more light, only darkness, so much darkness.


The place is empty again. Whatever it was that wanted you needed to remember is no longer there. And there is this emptiness and it hurts. The hurt is like a pebble in a shoe, a hurt that must be removed before one can go any further. Just a pebble.


Now you remember--there were pebbles in the place with the fountain that wasn’t a really a fountain but was a memorial to the dead. And you remind yourself that it is tradition to place pebbles on a grave when you visit. Always, Papa said. To let the dead know that you were there, although some from the old country still believe it will keep them from returning to haunt us and there may be some truth in that.


And there is this emptiness and it hurts.


And there were pebbles at the base of the fountain that was really a memorial and took some and placed them elsewhere on the plaque in the ground ten feet away. Such a small pile of pebbles. No flowers, flowers wilt and die, but little stones survive. So there were pebbles to mark this visit. Pebbles to remember. Pebbles to survive.


The girl, the daughter said, When I got home I went out into my garden and he was there. I know it sounds crazy, but I could feel him there. And suddenly a butterfly appeared and kept swirling around me. It was not a monarch butterfly or like anything I had ever seen in the garden or even a conservatory. It was all black except for some white spots and these brilliant blue spots on the back of its wings. And it kept circling around me, and I knew it was him saying goodbye, departing the earth, as they say, his soul in the form of a butterfly. But he was making one last visit to me to say goodbye. And I’ve never seen a black swallowtail in my garden again.


Black swallowtail. That is the name she gave for the black butterfly with the brilliant blue spots on its wings. But it was not like the yellow ones swirling in the fields that you are remembered this morning. Hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies swirling in the fields. Hundreds of souls leaving the earth. And then there was only one and then it was gone and then the darkness came. You remember that butterflies are symbols for the soul. The Greek word for butterfly is psyche or soul. In the old country so very long ago, the world that was filled with the yellow butterflies, Papa showed you a picture book. In your mind’s eye, you can still see beautiful Psyche, a woman with butterfly wings in love with the winged god Eros. But now you are remembering another word for “butterfly”. The language of youth returns. In Russian a “butterfly” is “baboshka”—a grandmother, old woman. So now you, too, have become a butterfly, a babushka—an old woman.


You can leave the place if you want to. Only lately you want stay longer each time. You are actually beginning to enjoy being here, searching for what it is that has lured you into the place—whatever dream or memory appears dimly at first, the mere outline of something that once was, not anything that really is. And you welcome the voices, too, voices that you have lived with most of your life and are beginning to fade. How can you hold on to them?


You can hear him now--that gruff, deep, reassuring voice. So what are our plans for the day? He asks this of you now, just the way he always did, every morning you have been here.


You turn over in bed to answer him, but there is no one there and you are frightened once again because there is so much emptiness here, next to you, not just inside your head where there is a place for dreams and memories and voices that aren’t really there. So you turn back, try to sit up, and reach for the metal walker next to the bed. If you concentrate enough, you can swing one leg over the side of the bed and try to get up. It’s time to get up, time to leave the place.


Yes, it hurts to get out of the bed. Your right knee is now just bone on bone. Yesterday you drove to the store and went through the stop sign at the corner of the street because you could not bring your foot off the accelerator pedal to brake in time. Soon you will have to stop driving altogether, sell the car and ask for rides. Or just stay inside, lie down and retreat to the place more than you really need or want to.


You manage to pull yourself up and stand. You place each swollen foot into the light blue slippers that do not hurt your feet. Gripping the metal walker you move slowly, deliberately from the bedroom to the living room. The air conditioner hums quietly.


Butterfly…babushka…old woman.


Outside it will be hot—maybe more than 100 degrees. Arizona gets like that in the summer. Better to stay inside. Arizona is hot, very hot, and yes, the girl and her friend were right. Arizona is red rocks and green grapefruits. You smile at the silliness of the thought and move to the patio window, draw back the curtains and look outside at the backyard with its citrus trees. A family of quail dart past busily searching for something to peck at amidst the pebbled backyards of the houses. Where is the grass? No grass, only pebbles and citrus trees. Arizona is red rocks and green grapefruits. Saying it again makes you laugh to yourself.


When he came home in the evening from work in the city, you would give him half a grapefruit before the main meal, a half grapefruit carefully cut around the edges, each half slice separated from the center so he could easily spoon it out. You used a special knife for that, the double-bladed one made especially for cutting grapefruit. You brought it here, for his grapefruits, to cut them the way you always did.


That first year, he discovered that they grew on trees right in the backyard. Green grapefruits that ripened into yellow, thick-skinned fruit so much sweeter than those you bought in the stores. He was so happy to have fruit he could pick in the morning, and he would place them in a bowl on the table. Sometimes he would have one for breakfast or lunch in the long days that followed the move out West after the retirement and the bankruptcy.


Today it will be one year and you will go and place pebbles on the plaque that marks where he rests. Next to it is another plaque, still only a marker with your name and birth date engraved on it. When you both moved here, you sold your jewelry and purchased these spaces side by. After all, what did you need all that jewelry for now? Such a deal! Two for the price of one! In life and in planning for death, he was always looking for a deal or gambling away what little you had


So what are our plans for the day? His last words. This is what you had to remember.


Enough. Tonight you will light a yahrzeit candle to remember him by. Soon you will join him not only in the place inside your head, but there in the quiet place across from the fountain as well.


No, not a fountain. A memorial to those who vanished, six million of them, but there are so many more. You will join them as well—the butterflies.


You remember butterflies, so many butterflies, so many souls.


Butterfly, babushka, old woman-- soul.






Marcy Gamzon currently teaches creative writing and AP English at School of the Arts where she has taught for 25 years. She received a BFA in Drama/Directing from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MA in English Literature from the University of Rochester. She is a Teacher Consultant and Fellow of the Genesee Valley Writing Project which she joined in 2007. A former Actors Equity stage manager, she has worked professionally for GeVa Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre and the Carolina Regional Theatre. Her directing credits include several community theatre productions for Blackfriars, Rochester Shakespeare Players, JCC, Shipping Dock Theatre, and the University of Rochester Summer Theatre (URST). In 2003, she received the Writers and Books "Teacher of Writing for Young Students" award for her work with students at SOTA.

Madonnas of Leningrad

Debra Dean Madonnas of Leningrad

Art work:
https://kingmadonnasofleningrad.weebly.com/marinas-memory-palace.html

 Writers and Books website:

wab.org/events/allofrochester/2012/index.shtml

NPR Interview:

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5313845

A discussion with Debra Dean:

 conversationsfamouswriters.blogspot.com/2006/03/debra-dean-madonnas-of-leningrad.html

Here are the paintings:

teacat.shawwebspace.ca/photos/view/paintings_in_the_madonnas_of_len

Reading Group Guide  (contains spoilers)

Introduction
In this sublime debut novel, set amid the horrors of the siege of Leningrad during World War II, a gifted writer explores the power of memory to save us... and betray us.

Questions for Discussion

1. The working of memory is a key theme of this novel. As a young woman, remembering the missing paintings is a deliberate act of survival and homage for Marina. In old age, however, she can no longer control what she remembers or forgets. "More distressing than the loss of words is the way that time contracts and fractures and drops her in unexpected places." How has Dean used the vagaries of Marina's memory to structure the novel? How does the narrative itself mimic the ways in which memory functions?
2. Sometimes, Marina finds consolations within the loss of her short-term memory. "One of the effects of this deterioration seems to be that as the scope of her attention narrows, it also focuses like a magnifying glass on smaller pleasures that have escaped her notice for years." Is aging merely an accumulation of deficits or are there gifts as well?
3. The narrative is interspersed with single-page chapters describing a room or a painting in the Hermitage Museum. Who is describing these paintings and what is the significance of the paintings chosen? How is each interlude connected to the chapter that follows?
4. The historical period of The Madonnas of Leningrad begins with the outbreak of war. How is war portrayed in this novel? How is this view of World War II different from or similar to other accounts you have come across?
5. Even though she says of herself that she is not a "believer," in what ways is Marina spiritual? Discuss Marina's faith: how does her spirituality compare with conventional religious belief? How do religion and miracles figure in this novel? What are the miracles that occur in The Madonnas of Leningrad?
6. A central mystery revolves around Andre's conception. Marina describes a remarkable incident on the roof of the Hermitage when one of the statues from the roof of the Winter Palace, "a naked god," came to life, though she later discounts this as a hallucination. In her dotage, she tells her daughter-in-law that Andre's father is Zeus. Dmitri offers other explanations: she may have been raped by a soldier or it's possible that their only coupling before he went off to the front resulted in a son. What do you think actually happened? Is it a flaw or a strength of the novel that the author doesn't resolve this question?
7. At the end of Marina's life, Helen admits that "once she had thought that she might discover some key to her mother if only she could get her likeness right, but she has since learned that the mysteries of another person only deepen, the longer one looks." How well do we ever know our parents? Are there things you've learned about your parents' past that helped you feel you knew them better?
8. In much the same way that Marina is struggling with getting old, her daughter, Helen, is struggling with disappointments and regrets often associated with middle-age: her marriage has failed, her son is moving away, she may never get any recognition as an artist, and last but not least, she is losing a life-long battle with her weight. Are her feelings of failure the result of poor choices and a bad attitude or are such feelings an inevitable part of the human condition?
9. In a sense, the novel has two separate but parallel endings: the young Marina giving the cadets a tour of the museum, and the elderly Marina giving the carpenter a tour of an unfinished house. What is the function of this coda? How would the novel be different if it ended with the cadets' tour?
10. What adjectives would you use to describe The Madonnas of Leningrad? Given the often bleak subject matter - war, starvation, dementia -- is the novel's view of the world depressing?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Harper Perennial. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

WRITING:  Continue to finish Carver stories and begin work on a narrative in 2nd person

CONTESTS!

Until Gwen

UNTIL GWEN--Dennis Lehane

Agenda:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lXthgpRBoM

Click on this link and read (saving paper):

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/06/until-gwen/302966/

 

adlibris.com/se/images/UntilGwen.pdf

What does this picture say about the story?
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76576

An interview with Dennis Lehane

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/hookers-guns-and-money/3125/


Until Gwen Response
What about "Until Gwen" sticks out the most to you? You could focus on a scene, an image, a character, the style, the point of view, a theme--anything really. Write a perfect paragraph of 5-7 sentences in response.

Also: 


"Until Gwen"
Use the title "Until Gwen" in a sentence about the main character of this story: "Until Gwen, he ______. During Gwen, he ______. After Gwen, he ______." Do the same with the main character's father: "Until Gwen, his father ______. During Gwen, his father ______. After Gwen, his father ______." Describe the lasting impact Gwen had on these two men. Are there similarities?

At the story's end, the main character has all the means to completely re-invent himself. Financially he is secure. On paper he has no past. He is able to completely start somewhere new where no one knows him. If you could write an epilogue to this story, one year later, where would he be?

https://prezi.com/r1sge_1scfof/until-gwen/

https://prezi.com/crdywghclmvp/until-gwen/ 

http://emilysimplicity.blogspot.com/2011/12/until-gwen-by-dennis-lehane.html 
Post your comments!

Second Person Stories

What is the Second Person

An example

from

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1200131-That-Second-Person

Let us talk about writing, just me and you. Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. Pour a cup of joe, or whatever your favorite poison is. Settle in and we'll get down to the nitty gritty. I can go on for hours about this writing business, but I won't take up too much of your time today. Writing is one my favorite subjects. I'm thinking it might be yours too. Why do I think it might be yours? Well, you're here aren't you? That's a pretty good indication. I could be wrong though, and I'm more than willing to admit that. But let's talk a bit if you don't mind.

See this paragraph above? That's one way to use the second person properly, when directly addressing someone. I'm addressing you, the reader and possible writer, directly. The paragraph is written with a specific audience in mind, not a general one. I blame my first college professor for my pet peeve about the misuse of the second person. He pounded it into my freshmen skull many years ago that "you" had no place in any essay except for extraordinary circumstances. When I had him again for nearly every other English class, that lesson was simply emphasized in other writings. Other professors touched on it in literature, but he really sent it home.

I mostly blame advertisement for the misuse of the second person in new writing. I don't know how many times I have driven my family to distraction because I've absentmindedly disagreed with an advertisement. Listen to those things sometime - advertisements. Most of them are trying to target a specific market, but the way the commercials are written is so broad. The net thrown tries to catch as many people as possible. The public at large is included in the message. "You" is inclusive. The message is worded so everyone hearing it is led to believe they need that product or service by the simple use of that one little word. It's no wonder beginning writers use it in their writing; they're exposed to it constantly.

Another reason some beginning writers use the second person incorrectly is because they are "telling the tale." Most people learn to talk before they learn to write, and more people are better at telling stories than writing them. When beginning writers start to write the stories in their heads, often things become lost in the translation. Oral telling is different than the written word, and some writers don't make the distinction between what's said and what's written. When storytellers have an audience in front of them, they can say "It's so black that you can't see your hand in front of your face..." or "...the wind's so cold it'll cut right through ya." Storytellers talk directly to their audience. Even if the audience doesn't "feel" the cold, the use of the second person can bring them deeper into the story.

It can be done; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tim Robbins is a fictional novel written in second person, and there are several short stories which use the second person well, but they are rare. Also, the "choose your own adventure" genre of fiction has often been written in second person. Now that the Internet is so well established, interactive stories and many role playing forums are perfect homes for fictional stories that incorporate the second person.

In non-fiction writing, the use of the second person is commonplace. As in this opening sentence from Take Control of Your Sales by Sonya Carmichael Jones, "Regardless of your writing genre, marketing is the primary means by which your book sales are generated." This article addresses a specific audience, the book writer who wants to sell books. By inserting "you" into the article, the author attempts to draw the writer in and make the article personal. Such casual writing is routine nowadays. However, the above sentence could just have easily been written, "Regardless of genre, marketing is the primary means by which book sales are generated." Both are correct, it's simply a matter of preference.

If used properly, use of the second person can draw the reader into a piece like no other word. Such as this statement: "If you're one of the millions of people in the United States who has ever..." It is written directly to a specific audience. It attempts to hook that audience immediately. Hopefully, anyone who falls into the category of the article will read the rest of article with interest. Those who do not fall under the umbrella of whatever the article covers will most likely not read it. However, since they are not the intended audience, the use of the second person has fulfilled a purpose as well.

Using the second person is the easy way, but it can alienate half the readers in the blink of an eye. Consider an article written about some extreme sport where the author has written "... and you feel the rush of wind screaming through your hair. This is why you dig freefall, the rush..." Well, there went all of his sensitive bald readers and anyone who's never felt freefall, or those who don't "dig" it.

Using the second person can be a very powerful tool in an author's toolkit. But if it's used incorrectly it can gum up the works good and proper. Generally, try not to use the second person in an essay or a fictional story that is not aimed at a specific audience. There are always exceptions of course. What would this wonderful language be without exceptions? In my opinion, there are ways to get around using the second person - notice how I have not used it since the first paragraph except in quotations? A writer simply has to be creative. It's more fun that way. Is there a better way to enhance writing skills than finding more creative ways to say things? I can't think of one.

Well, I enjoyed this time with you. I hope you did too. Thanks for coming by and listening to me voice my opinion. It was a blast. I've got to get on to other things, but I hope you'll stop by again soon.

Take care.

from

www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1200131-That-Second-Person

Donald Barthelme "The School"

AGENDA:

READ:
"The School"
http://www.npr.org/programs/death/readings/stories/bart.html

Post a comment about the theme of this story and the style>  How does it compare with Hemingway and Carver?

Check out analysis of story:
https://www.thoughtco.com/analysis-the-school-by-donald-barthelme-2990474

More comments about the story:
http://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/stories-we-love-donald-barthelmes-the-school-in-which-is-revealed-the-meaning-of-life/


WRITE:
Continue working on Carver story

Contests: Nancy Thorpe Poetry, Bennington, Scholastic

Hemingway

AGENDA:

Read "A Clean Well lighted Place"
http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html

"A  Very  Short Story"
https://biblioklept.org/2012/07/24/a-very-short-story-ernest-hemingway/

Work on Carver story

Scholastic Art and Writing contest link

http://www.artandwriting.org/

Raymond Carver Style

From Shmoop:

Hemingway-esque, Architectural

The two things you're most likely to hear about Carver's writing style are that it's very much like Ernest Hemingway's, and that it's an example of minimalism (Hemingway being a master of minimalism). The idea behind minimalism is that by giving the reader a bare minimum of information, he or she will be able to figure out what's underneath, according to his or her unique position. Jay McInerney, author of 1980s sensation Bright Lights, Big City, and a student of Carver's says "Carver's language was unmistakably like Hemingway's – the simplicity and clarity, the repetitions, the nearly conversational rhythms […]" (source). We can definitely see this. Think of the repetition of the word "comfort" at the end of Part 2, or the repletion of the words "blind man" throughout the story. Now, here's what Carver has to say about being compared to Hemingway:

I've read a lot of him. When I was 19 or 20 years old I read a lot, and Hemingway was part of what I read. […] I'm sure I learned from Hemingway, no doubt about it, and especially from his early work. I like his work. If I'm compared with him, I feel honored. For me, Hemingway's sentences are poetry. There's a rhythm, a cadence. I can reread his early stories and I find them as extraordinary as ever. They fire me up as much as ever. It's marvelous writing. (source)

Now, here's what Carver says about being called a minimalist:

Critics often use the term "minimalist" when discussing my prose. But it's a label that bothers me: it suggests the idea of a narrow vision of life, low ambitions, and limited cultural horizons. And, frankly, I don't believe that's my case. Sure, my writing is lean and tends to avoid any excess. (source)

There's really only one way for you to decide if Carver and Hemingway have similar styles: read and compare them, then be the judge. 

You don't have to read Hemingway, though, to judge whether Carver's prose is architectural. Author's intentions don't always map correctly onto their work, but we know Carver intended his to be architectural, and a certain kind of architecture at that:

He [Hemingway] said prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over. That suits me. Flaubert said close to the same thing, that words are like stones with which one builds a wall. I believe that completely. I don't like careless writers whose words have no moorings, are too slippery. (source)

To greatly simplify matters, Baroque architecture is big, fancy, and ornate. There are baroque cathedrals, like St. Paul's in London, but the ones the ones in the documentary seem to be Gothic cathedrals, including Notre Dame in Paris. Carver's prose isn't elaborate or fancy. Word by word, sentence by sentence, he builds a fairly simple story. "Cathedral" doesn't depend on lots of details or extravagant touches, but rather on the ordinary details of everyday life. Here's one of our favorite examples:

We finished everything, including half of a strawberry pie. For a few moments we sat as if stunned. Sweat beaded our faces. Finally we got up from the table and left our dirty plates. We did not look back. (1.46)

A series of simple sentences build one on top of the other to express a simple yet mysterious meaning. We can all understand the excellence of sharing a big meal among friends, but we aren't exactly sure what it means in this particular case.

What kind of architecture do you think Carver's prose most closely resembles? Click here for a link to modernist architecture, and here for postmodern architecture.

Read "A Clean Well lighted Place"
http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html

"A  Very  Short Story"
https://biblioklept.org/2012/07/24/a-very-short-story-ernest-hemingway/ 

Bigfoot Stole My Wife/ Carver Story

AGENDA:

Work on writing your Carver story

Register for Scholastic

Bigfoot Stole My Wife

By Ron Carlson

The problem is credibility.

The problem, as I'm finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility. A lot of people look at me and say, sure Rick, Bigfoot stole your wife. It makes me sad to see it, the look of disbelief in each person's eye. Trudy's disappearance makes me sad, too, and I'm sick in my heart about where she may be and how he's treating her, what they do all day, if she's getting enough to eat. I believe he's beeing good to her -- I mean I feel it -- and I'm going to keep hoping to see her again, but it is my belief that I probably won't.

In the two and a half years we were married, I often had the feeling that I would come home from the track and something would be funny. Oh, she'd say things: One of these days I'm not going to be here when you get home, things like that, things like everybody says. How stupid of me not to see them as omens. When I'd get out of bed in the early afternoon, I'd stand right here at this sink and I could see her working in her garden in her cut-off Levis and bikini top, weeding, planting, watering. I mean it was obvious. I was too busy thinking about the races, weighing the odds, checking the jockey roster to see what I now know: he was watching her too. He'd probably been watching her all summer.

So, in a way it was my fault. But what could I have done? Bigfoot steals your wife. I mean: even if you're home, it's going to be a mess. He's big and not well trained.

When I came home it was about eleven-thirty. The lights were on, which really wasn't anything new, but in the ordinary mess of the place, there was a little difference, signs of a struggle. There was a spilled Dr. Pepper on the counter and the fridge was open. But there was something else, something that made me sick. The smell. The smell of Bigfoot. It was hideous. It was . . . the guy is not clean.

Half of Trudy's clothes are gone, not all of them, and there is no note. Well, I know what it is. It's just about midnight there in the kitchen which smells like some part of hell. I close the fridge door. It's the saddest thing I've ever done. There's a picture of Trudy and me leaning against her Toyota taped to the fridge door. It was taken last summer. There's Trudy in her bikini top, her belly brown as a bean. She looks like a kid. She was a kid I guess, twenty-six. The two times she went to the track with me everybody looked at me like how'd I rate her. But she didn't really care for the races. She cared about her garden and Chinese cooking and Buster, her collie, who I guess Bigfoot stole too. Or ate. Buster isn't in the picture, he was nagging my nephew Chuck who took the photo. Anyway I close the fridge door and it's like part of my life closed. Bigfoot steals your wife and you're in for some changes.

You come home from the track having missed the Daily Double by a neck, and when you enter the home you are paying for and in which you and your wife and your wife's collie live, and your wife and her collie are gone as is some of her clothing, there is nothing to believe. Bigfoot stole her. It's a fact. What should I do, ignore it? Chuck came down and said something like well if Bigfoot stole her why'd he take the Celica? Christ, what a cynic! Have you ever read anything about Bigfoot not being able to drive? He'd be cramped in there, but I'm sure he could manage.

I don't really care if people believe me or not. Would that change anything? Would that bring Trudy back here? Pull the weeds in her garden?

As I think about it, no one believes anything anymore. Give me one example of someone believing one thing. No one believes me. I myself can't believe all the suspicion and cynicism there is in today's world. Even at the races, some character next to me will poke over at my tip sheet and ask me if I believe that stuff. If I believe? What is there to believe? The horse's name? What he did the last time out? And I look back at this guy, too cheap to go two bucks on the program, and I say: its history. It is historical fact here. Believe. Huh. Here's a fact: I believe everything.

Credibility.

When I was thirteen years old, my mother's trailor was washed away in the flooding waters of the Harley River and swept thirty-one miles, ending right side up and neary dead level just outside Mercy, in fact in the old weed-eaten parking lot for the abandoned potash plant. I know this to be true because I was inside the trailor the whole time with my pal, Nuggy Reinecker, who found the experience more life-changing than I did.

Now who's going to believe this story? I mean, besides me, because I was there. People are going to say, come on, thirty-one miles? Don't you mean thirty-one feet?

We had gone in out of the rain after school to check out a magazine that belonged to my mother's boyfriend. It was a copy of Dude, and there was a fold-out page I will never forget of a girl lying on a beach on her back. It was a color photograph. The girl was a little pale, I mean, this was probably her first day out in the sun, and she had no clothing on. So it was good, but what made it great was that they had made her a little bathing suit out of sand. Somebody had spilled a little sand just right, here and there, and the sane was this incredible gold color, and it made her look so absolutly naked you wanted to put your eyes out.

Nuggy and I knew there was flood danger in Griggs; we'd had a flood every year almost and it had been raining for five days on and off, but when the trailor bucked the first time, we thought it was my mother come home to catch us in the dirty book. Nuggy shoved the magazine under his bed and I ran out to check the door. It only took me a second and I holldered back Hey no sweat, no one's here, but by the time Ireturned to see what other poses they'd had this beautiful woman commit, Nuggy already had his pants to his ankles and was involved in what we knew was a sin.

It if hadn't been the timing of the first wave with this act of his, Nuggy might have gone on to live what the rest of us call a normal life. But the Harley had crested and the head wave, which they estimated to be three feet minimum, unmoored the trailer with a push that knocked me over the sofa, and threw Nuggy, already entangled in his trousers, clear across the bedroom.

I watched the village of Griggs as we sailed through. Some of the village, the Exxon Station, part of it at least, and the carwash, which folded up right away, tried to come along with us, and I saw the front of Painters' Mercantile, the old porch and signboard, on and off all day.

You can believe this: it was not a smooth ride. We'd rip along for ten seconds, dropping and growling over rocks, and rumbling over tree stumps, and then wham! the front end of the trailer would lodge against a rock or something that could stop it, and whoa! we'd wheel around sharp as a carnival ride, worse really, because the furniture would be thrown against the far side and us with it, sometimes we'd end up in a chair and sometimes the chair would sit on us. My mother had about four thousand knickknacks in five big box shelves, and they gave us trouble for the first two or three miles, flying by like artillery, left, right, some small glass snail hits you in the face, later in the back, but that stuff all finally settled in the foot and then two feet of water which we took on.

We only slowed down once and it was the worst. In the railroad flats I thought we had stopped and I let go of the door I was hugging and tried to stand up and then swish, another rush sent us right along. We rammed along all day it seemed, but when we finally washed up in Mercy and the sheriff's cousin pulled open the door and got swept back to his car by water and quite a few of those knickknacks, just over an hour had passed. We had averaged, they figured later, about thirty-two miles an hour, reaching speeds of up to fifty at Lime Falls and the Willows. I was okay and walked out bruised and well washed, but when the sheriff's cousin pulled Nuggy out, he looked genuinely hurt.

"For godsakes," I remember the sheriff's cousin saying, "The damn flood knocked this boy's pants off!" But Nuggy wasn't talking. In fact, he never hardly talked to me again in the two years he stayed at Regional School. I heard later, and I believe it, that he joined the monastery over in Malcolm County.

My mother, because she didn't have the funds to haul our rig back to Griggs, worried for a while, but then the mayor arranged to let us stay out where we were. So after my long ride in a trailer down the flooded Harley River with my friend Nuggy Reinbecker, I grew up in a parking lot outside of Mercy, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't too bad, even though our trailer never did smell straight again.

Now you can believe all that. People are always saying: don't believe everything you read, or everything you hear. And I'm here to tell you. Believe it. Everything. Everything you read. Everything you hear. Believe your eyes. Your ears. Believe the small hairs on the back of your neck. Believe all of history, and all of the versions of history, and all the predictions for the future. Believe every weather forecast. Believe in God, the afterlife, unicorns, showers on Tuesday. Everything has happened. Everything is possible.

I came home from the track to find the cupboard bare. Trudy is not home. The place smells funny: hairy. It's a fact and I know it as a fact: Bigfoot has been in my house.

Bigfoot stole my wife.

She's gone.

Believe it.

I gotta believe it.

Lorrie Moore:

"How to Become a Writer"

http://www.sfuadcnf.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-to-Become-a-Writer-Lorrie-Moore.pdf

https://scripturientbibliophile.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/on-how-to-become-a-writer-1985-by-lorrie-moore/

Please add a response in the comment box to Lorrie Moore's and Carlson's.

HMWK:  Finish reading Carver stories

Raymond Carver poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/raymond-carver

Raymond Carver

AGENDA:

Discuss Carver stories.

Interview with Carver:

https://sun.iwu.edu/~jplath/carver.html

Raymond Carver was a short-story writer credited with revitalizing the form in the United States during the 1970s and '80s. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Carver spent most of his childhood in Yakima, Washington. He moved to California in 1958 and took up writing in the early 1960s. During the 1960s he worked as a textbook editor, lecturer and teacher while writing, and published several short stories and his first book, Winter Insomnia (1970). His 1976 collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? established his reputation and featured some of his trademarks: alcohol, poverty and ordinary people in ordinary but desperate situations. Carver, who also taught writing and wrote poetry, has been called a "minimalist" because of his spare and realistic fiction, and has been compared to Ernest Hemingway and Anton Chekhov. In the late 1970s Carver required hospitalization four times in under two years for acute alcoholism. By the mid-1980s, however, he was sober, writing full-time and married to the poet Tess Gallagher (it was his second marriage). He died at the age of fifty from lung cancer, and his last collection of stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published posthumously in 1989. His collections of poetry include Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985) and Ultramarine (1986).

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Raymond+Carver+Interview&view=detail&=&=&mid=034FCB7156A1DFBA432F034FCB7156A1DFBA432F&rvsmid=034FCB7156A1DFBA432F034FCB7156A1DFBA432F&adlt=strict#view=detail&mid=034FCB7156A1DFBA432F034FCB7156A1DFBA432F

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Raymond+Carver+in+Person&view=detail&=&=&mid=47C6DB284A688E7EDDE047C6DB284A688E7EDDE0&rvsmid=47C6DB284A688E7EDDE047C6DB284A688E7EDDE0&adlt=strict#view=detail&mid=47C6DB284A688E7EDDE047C6DB284A688E7EDDE0

Short Stories

AGENDA:

Classic Short stories online:
http://www.classicshorts.com/author.html\

http://www.classicreader.com/browse/6/p/title/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCarver%2C%20Raymond&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0


AGENDA:

Go to library and get Raymond Carver short stories.

Read title short story

Work on second person short stories--workshop


Raymond Carver:


The dirty-realism school of writing became popular in the 1980s thanks to a group of writers who began writing about middle-class characters who faced disappointments, heartbreaks, and harsh truths in their ordinary lives. Granta, a highly regarded literary journal, coined the term dirty realism in 1983 when it published its eighth issue, which featured writers from this school. Granta 8, as the issue became known, included stories by Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, and many others. Although each of these dirty-realism writers has a distinctive style, they are connected by their sparse prose, simple language with few adjectives or adverbs and direct descriptions of ordinary people and events. Much of the fiction published in the New Yorker, where many of these writers were and are still published, is of the dirty-realism school, but today the term—as well as the practice—has somewhat fallen out of fashion. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” was published in 1981, at the height of the dirty-realism movement, and the story is often regarded as the prime example of the form.




Critics have aligned Carver with minimalist writers because of his truncated prose and elliptical delineation of characters and events in the volume What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, in which Esquire magazine claimed that Carver had “reinvented the short story.” The stories of this collection, which reach extremes of stark understatement, have been called spare and knowing masterpieces by some reviewers and laconic, empty failures by others. Specifically, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” has been described by some commentators as a story where nothing really happens, but others see it as a demonstration of the barely-furnished nature of Carver's distinctive style. Most critics laud the impact and power of the stories in the collection, including “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” Scholars have praised the realistic and evocative dialogue of the couples in the story as well as Carver's use of irony. Critically and popularly, Carver is acknowledged as a profound influence on contemporary writers and literature, and stories such as “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” are considered valuable, original contributions to the American short fiction genre.



Themes
The Elusive Nature of Love

The nature of love remains elusive throughout “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” despite the characters’ best efforts to define it. Mel tries again and again to pinpoint the meaning of love, but his examples never build up to any coherent conclusion. For example, he tells his friends about an elderly couple who nearly died in a car crash, but the conclusion of the story—the old man depressed by not being able to see his wife—merely confuses everyone. When he asserts that he’ll tell everyone exactly what love is, he instead digresses into a muddled meditation about how strange it is that he and the others have loved more than one person. His attempts to clarify the nature of love eventually devolve into a bitter tirade against his ex-wife. He seems much more certain about what love is not and tells Terri several times that if abusive love is true love, then she “can have it.”


Laura and Nick believe that they know what love is, but they never really provide a clear definition or explain why they’re so certain in their convictions. They merely demonstrate their love for each other by blushing and holding hands, but these actions simply support the mystery of love rather than unmask it. Terri, of all the friends, seems to be most certain about the meaning of love and repeatedly claims that her abusive ex-boyfriend, Ed, truly loved her, despite his crazy way of showing it. The examples she provides of this love—beating, stalking, and threatening—are disturbing but serve as proof in her mind. Like the others, however, she cannot translate her certainty into any kind of clear explanation of the nature of love.
The Inadequacy of Language

Although the four friends talk for a while about love, the fact that they never manage to define it suggests that language can’t adequately describe emotional, abstract subjects. Mel does the most talking, but his bloated stories and rambling digressions show that he has trouble conveying his thoughts and feelings, despite how much he talks. Terri speaks a great deal about her former lover Ed, but when Mel challenges her, she turns to intuition to prove her point. She believes that Ed loved her no matter what Mel or the others think, demonstrating that gut feelings about love can be more powerful and accurate than words. Laura and Nick, meanwhile, say very little about the nature of love and instead rely on physical gestures to clarify what language cannot: they hold hands, blush, and touch each other’s legs. Carver indicates that words simply aren’t enough when talking about love, which is probably why all four friends have fallen silent by the end of the story.
Motifs
Drinking

Nick, Mel, Terri, and Laura consume copious amounts of alcohol during their discussion about the nature of love, and their increasing intoxication mirrors their growing confusion about love and inability to define it. The friends have gathered to talk and drink gin, and the pouring, stirring, and sipping of drinks punctuates their conversation. As the friends get drunk, their conversation grows blurry and incoherent and finally stops completely. Drinking also serves as a kind of ritual in the story as the friends pass the bottle of gin around the table and make toasts to love. At the end of the story, as the friends discuss going out to dinner, Mel says they must finish the gin first, as though only finishing the bottle can free them from the discussion.
Symbols
The Sun

The sun in the story, which is bright at the beginning and gone by the end, represents the loss of clarity and happiness as the friends grow increasingly confused about the meaning of love. At the beginning of the story, Nick notes that the kitchen is bright and compares the friends to giddy children who have “agreed on something forbidden.” The talk is light and hopeful, just a friendly conversation on a gin-soaked afternoon. However, as the conversation about love becomes increasingly dark and complex, the sun in the kitchen slips slowly away. Nick notes that the sun is “changing, getting thinner,” and, not long after, that the sun is “draining out of the room.” As the sun disappears completely, the conversation devolves into Mel’s drunken threats against his ex-wife, including a fantasy of murdering her. At the end of the story, the friends are sitting in complete darkness. The sun has gone, as have their rosy, hopeful perceptions of love.

Nancy Thorpe Poetry Contest/ Hollins University

10th and 11th grade women

LINK: www.hollins.edu/poetry-contest